“A zealot, huh? Great. Just what I need, some goddamn whacked-out civil servant on my case.”
“He’s not—”
“Ben, I want to know what the DA is planning. I’m particularly interested in whether they’ve talked to a guy named Perkins. Andrew Perkins. I want you to find out for me.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. Why not? You work there, for God’s sake. Hell, I helped you get the job.”
“You—No, I interviewed like everyone else.”
His father smirked. “Right. I bet that’s what won them over. You have such a dynamic personality.” He laughed. “I had Senator Abrams put in a good word for you.”
“You didn’t have any business—”
“You wanted the job, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“This is beside the point. You’re in the DA’s office, and I need help. From the inside. So are you going to help? If you hate me so much you can’t bring yourself to do it for me, do it for your mom. She’s really torn up over this thing.”
Ben bit down on his lower lip. “In the first place, they’ve kept me isolated from this case, so I don’t have any idea what they’re planning. In the second place, even if I did, I couldn’t tell you. I have an ethical obligation of confidentiality to the client I work for. And my client is the State of Oklahoma. Not you.”
“Shit.” Ben’s father threw his hands up in the air. “I should have known.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You must be loving this. At long last you have a chance to lord it over your dear old dad. For the first time, you have something I want. Something I need. So you’re not going to give it to me.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with it!”
“In a pig’s eye. You’ve always been this way, Ben. Since day one. You take and take and take, but you never give.”
“That’s not—”
“What the hell did I send you to law school for, huh?” His rage was boiling. His face was turning a hot, vivid crimson. “Why did I pay all those bills, so you could throw your life away being a government whore? I tried to get you into a respectable occupation, and you, in your usual obstinate petty way, insisted on becoming a goddamn scum-of-the-earth fucking whore lawyer.” He picked up a chair pillow and threw it across the room. “And now that I actually need a lawyer, now that you could actually help the family and pay me back for all I’ve done for you, you refuse!”
The aching in Ben’s gut was so intense he could barely stand. “I don’t have any choice. I can’t help you.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
Ben hesitated. “Sometimes there isn’t any difference.”
Ben’s father exploded with white-hot rage. “Do you know what they’ll do to me?”
Ben didn’t answer, but he had a pretty good idea.
In the space of a heartbeat, his father’s fist was in the air. In the same instant, Ben flashed on every time he had seen that fist before, every time he had trembled and fallen into line in its presence. He held up his hands in front of his face.
“You goddamn coward. You disgust me.” His father’s hand dropped to his side, the threat unfulfilled. He took several deep breaths through great heaving lungs, slowly bringing himself back under control. The trembling throughout his body subsided.
He strode to the door, but stopped just before he passed through. “I don’t want anything more to do with you, Ben. Ever. Don’t even think about coming crawling back to me. It’s done. Over. I won’t even speak your name. You’re out of my will; you’re out of my life.”
And just before he passed through that door, he added one final sentence, one that haunted Ben then and still did today, years afterward, as he talked to his mother on the phone, every time he talked to his mother. It was the sentence she had never heard. It was the sentence Ben heard every day of his life.
“I don’t want anything to do with you,” he had said. “From now on, I don’t have a son.”
Ben sat up and cleared his eyes. “I’m sorry, Mother, I didn’t mean to keep you up so long. I’ll let you go.”
“Benjamin—”
“Yes?”
“I know I’ve said this before, but—it would make me very happy if you would just let me help you.”
“Financially? No.”
“Well, you can’t fault me for trying.” Another long pause. “Benjamin?”
“Yes.”
“Feel free to call. Anytime. Then I’d have something to tell Majel Howard next time I see her.”
“All right. I’ll try.”
“And, Benjamin?”
“Yes?”
“Try not to worry so much, all right? You’ve always taken things so hard, so … seriously. Problems have a way of working themselves out. I truly believe that. Things will turn out all right in the end.”
“I hope so, Mother. I hope so. And—”
“Yes, dear?”
The tiniest of smiles tugged at the corners of his lips. “Thanks.”
Chapter 31
BEN HAD HEARD THE phrase media circus bandied about by lawyers, but it had never had any real meaning for him until now. As he approached the plaza outside the state courthouse at Denver and Fifth, the press descended on him. Flashbulbs burst in his eyes; minicam spotlights blinded him. A multitude of microphones were thrust under his nose, many of them bearing call letters he couldn’t even identify. This many reporters hadn’t been gathered together in one place in this state since the Oklahoma City bombing. And the trial hadn’t even started yet.
“Mr. Kincaid! Would you care to give us a comment?”
“No.” Ben tried to push past them, but he was massively outnumbered.
“Mr. Kincaid! Tell us what you expect to happen in there today.”
“No.”
“Don’t you have a responsibility to the American public?”
“No.”
“Your client was willing to talk to us. Why won’t you?”
“If you’ll excuse me.” Ben tried to push out of the circle, but no one was budging.
“Look!” A voice emerged from somewhere behind them. “Wallace Barrett’s in the courtroom! And he’s got a gun!”
As one, the reportorial massé broke and ran toward the courthouse, practically trampling Ben in the process. When they were gone, only Ben and Christina, the one who had sounded the alert, remained.
“Since I know Barrett isn’t being brought from the jailhouse for this hearing, I suppose he isn’t waving a gun around either, right?”
Christina blushed. “I thought you looked like you needed some help.”
“You were right.” Ben took her arm and escorted her into the courthouse. They took the stairs, which allowed them to avoid the reporters and were probably quicker than the elevators anyway. At the sixth-floor landing, just outside the stairwell door, they found Jack Bullock propped up against the wall.
“Hiding out?” Ben asked.
Bullock almost smiled. “Just taking a breather.”
“I thought you liked the press.”
“All things in moderation.” He pushed himself away from the wall. “You sure you still want to go through with this, Ben?”
“Well, it seems a bit late in the game to fold.”
Bullock shook his head sadly. “I just don’t see any upside in this for you. All you’re going to accomplish in there is the absolute and final destruction of your reputation. And when it’s all over, Barrett’s still going to spend the rest of his life in prison. Assuming he avoids the lethal injection.”
“Jack, tell me something. Off the record, away from the press. Have you even considered the possibility that you might be wrong? That Barrett might be innocent? After all, your case is entirely based on circumstantial evidence.”
“Most murder prosecutions are. So what? I’ve got DNA and blood evidence linking him to the scene. I’ve got a neighbor who saw him fleeing from the scene. And I’ve got about half a billion people who saw him running from the police. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck …”